


consecration

by drivingnotwashing



Series: roadside gospel [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Sam Winchester, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Sam Winchester Has a Crush on Dean Winchester, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:40:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drivingnotwashing/pseuds/drivingnotwashing
Summary: November 1997, the Winchesters take on a wraith case that leaves Dean bruised, John stranded and Sam, well, nobody is quite sure what to make of Sam.(timestamp for chapter 9 of "motel bibles")
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: roadside gospel [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020145
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	consecration

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone! as promised, here is a timestamp for that wraith hunt dean thinks about in chapter 9 (and that, he remembers, has traumatized his brother for years). this is just a companion piece, a side dish (like some fries) before i get back to working on my main course (and by that i mean flip through pages of thesaurus because i use the same verbs all the time).
> 
> slight trigger warning; i chose not to give archive warnings because i never know how to tag these things but there's a case with a wraith who used to be a patient in a hospital where she was severely mistreated. (read end notes for the explicit explanation, i don't want to spoil it but if you feel like it might be triggering, feel free to check out the details and be safe!) also, sam is fourteen years old and he mentions quite a few times his own feelings towards dean (who is 18). nothing happens between them, but sam has a crush, so if that makes you uncomfortable to read about, be careful with this fic!

_Jeremiah 1:5_

_“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,_

_and before you were born I consecrated you;_

_I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”_

* * *

There was not much to do in Phillips Wisconsin, but Sam could have told you this hours ago, long before his father made the road here. It would have saved them some time and some sanity as well because each time Sam has to listen to his brother and father hum AC/DC under their breaths while sipping tepid fast-food sodas, he loses years off of his lifespan.

He’s not sure if he’s pissy just because he’s fourteen and his life is spent in the backseat of a muscle car with no intimacy or because his marine of a father had made him run twelve miles at 5 am before making him pack his things to hop out of town and now his legs are sore and his knobbly knees ache, and, the cherry on the top of this pile of shit cake, he’s got a bruised elbow from a dumbass hunt, but either way, he’s so tired of everything it’s not even funny. 

Two days ago, he’d been in Winnipeg. Dean had gotten two jobs there, serving burgers in a diner from 9 to 6 before picking a shift at a night mini-market from 7 to 2. He’d been out of their motel a lot, juggling between work and taking his diner colleague, Judy Stevens, to the kissing spot out of town as often as he could, which meant Sam had spent almost three weeks alone in that motel room. He didn’t resent Dean, even if he wanted to sometimes, if he’d been half as attractive as Dean, he’d make out in the dark with Judy Stevens, who was all long legs and dark hair, six days of the week too. But Sam wasn’t his brother, he didn’t have his confidence, and his time at Winnipeg had pretty much been divided equally between school and watching reruns of M*A*S*H on their grainy, motel included TV. He had wondered idly when Dean found the time to sleep, because as soon as he left the mini market, he was locking lips with Judy in the backseat of the Impala and Sam would only see him in the mornings, gobbling down milk from the carton and piling buttered toasts in a napkin so he could run out of the door and go to work. He’d been worried about it, which he would have never admitted to Dean directly because that dickhead would have twisted his nipple and called him a girl, but he did worry. 

He’s not worrying so much now, Dean is being an idiot, twirling a knife between his fingers while their father is driving on bumpy, unsafe roads. Sam almost hopes he’ll cut himself, not too deep but enough to teach him a lesson. They’re finally stopping, parking their car in front of a Cowboy themed motel (with fucking cow skulls hanging from the doors, Jesus Christ), when their father catches Dean’s knife in the air and pockets it.

“You’re gonna gouge your eye out,” He rumbles as they all get out of the car.

Dean never discusses John’s orders or remarks but Sam can see where he bit his upper lip to stop a snarky comment, which he would have directed at Sam if he’d been the one to make the same observation. 

“Stay here, I’m getting our room.”

“Yes, sir.” It’s almost a little creepy, how they both say it on the same tone, at the exact same time, like well-programmed robots, or obedient dogs. Sam kind if hates it, but Dean always looks back at him with a glint in his eyes, like they share a secret when they’re in sync like this and it’s a little pathetic but when Dean smiles, Sam feels less inclined to complain about stupid shit. 

It isn’t the first time they’ve been in Wisconsin, it’s not even the second, but it’s been a while and Sam is surprised by a cold the wind is. Why can’t they come to these parts of America when it’s Summer, why can’t they go to Florida in November and keep the Midwest for July hunts? He hates the cold, always has, if he could, he’d buy a house near the sea where it’s always sunny and the sand is always warm. He thinks Dean would like it, he’d complain the first few days about his hair getting lighter and his freckles getting darker but his older brother is a bit like a cat, always looking for the sunlit spaces in their motel rooms, sometimes he’ll even stretch on the carpet in front of a window. Maybe it’s all of this training that makes him search for soothing heat, something that’ll make his muscles pliant and butter soft. Sam is always drawn to the view, when Dean just decides to lie somewhere, unfold his limbs and spread his body on a warm surface. When he was younger, he could still pretend it was innocent curiosity, but he’s hit puberty now and he knows that’s a big, fat, ugly lie. 

He will not think about it, not now and not ever if he can help it and so maybe the cold is a good thing, there are fewer chances for Dean to parade shirtless in their motel room if each puff of wind feels like ice on his naked skin. Small mercies.

“You think they’ll have some cow heads in the rooms too?” Dean asks, breaking the comfortable silence between them.

“That’d be fucking weird.”

“Don’t say fucking.”

“You said fucking when you were fourteen!” Sam exclaims, he’s always shocked by how unfair Dean can be when he was _worse_ at the same age. “And dad doesn’t care if I swear!”

Dean flicks at his hoodie strings and Sam slaps his hands away, “Well, I care, can’t have you talk like a southern trucker, geek boy.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“Don’t say bullshit.”

“Eat my ass, Dean.”

“ _Boys_.” Their father is back, and he’s already pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. They've been having this effect on him a lot more recently. “I have good and bad news.”

Sam’s head perks up at this, he’s taken the habit of looking at the ground, hair covering his face, when people aren’t talking directly at him. He knows it’s not the greatest of habits; it makes him look pathetic Dean had said once, and that had weirdly hurt a lot more than Sam had expected it to, but he’s grown a lot in the last year and he’s not really used to his height yet. He’s not taller than Dean, but it’s inclining towards that and he doesn’t like how his limbs are shaped now. When Dean was fourteen, he hadn’t been very tall, but he’d started to fill out a bit, to look more settled in his own body in some way. Sam is the opposite, all of his bones are too long, he’s too skinny and he feels raggedy and brittle. 

“The room I got has cable TV,” Their dad continues, “But there’s only one bed.”

They both groan at this, they’ve been in this situation at least a hundred times, and it’s always a fight. Because Dean doesn’t want to sleep with dad, _“He snores like a bear, Sam!”_ , but Sam, well since he’s turned twelve, sleeping with Dean has become a far too risky endeavour. And their dad doesn’t really care, but Sam suspects that he’d rather share with Dean now because Sam is all sharp elbows and cold feet.

John raises a hand, a small smile on his lips, he’s been in a strangely good mood recently. Sam isn’t going to question it, because questioning the good mood would put a stop to said good mood, but still, it’s a little freaky, he’s a lot more used to a grumpy dad than a happy-go-lucky dad. “Alright, settle down, we’ll do this the old-fashioned way.” He gets a coin out of his pocket, “Heads, you’re sharing, tails I’m sharing with one of you, and if it’s tails, we’ll do this again to know which one it is.”

It’s heads, of course, because life is a joke and Sam is its unwilling punchline. 

Their father hides his scowl well but Sam can still see some hints of it behind the unusual amusement and constant stern glare. They drag their duffles inside the room with minor complaints; it is at the ground level which makes it easier, but it’s part of a big building with two flights of stairs. Usually, when John knows that he’s going to leave them for a few weeks, he tries to get them a sort of apartment room, with a kitchenette and two single beds, but for shorter hunts like this one, he’ll get a proper motel room where there’s only the bed, a wobbly table and its two chairs, some gaudy paintings on the walls and a couch, if they’re lucky. They’re lucky this time, which means their dad won’t have to sleep on the ground or in one of the chairs, with his leather jacket draped over his arms like a security blanket. 

Something always twists inside of Sam when he sees his dad like this, his back straight against the surface of his chair, always rigid and frowning, even when he sleeps. It’s as if he never truly rests, and it cuts Sam deep, to think of his father’s nightmares, he wonders if they’re similar to his own, but he supposes John’s hauntings are clearer, they’re born of memories, Sam’s nightmares are just a reflection of himself, hazy and vile. 

The room has red walls, Sam finds it suffocating, but there aren’t any stuffed animals looking at him from the corners with their glassy pearl eyes, just the blood-red walls and a picture of a horse race hanging above the king-sized bed. Dean looks enamoured, his fingers brush against the blankets, cow print, and he fluffs his pillow before he launches himself on the bed, facing the door. Their dad looks as disturbed by the decor as Sam feels. 

John’s not going to remove his jacket, he’s going to drive around, get a drink and exhaust himself before he comes back to crash here, it’s written in the way his hands spasm open and the furrow of his brow.

He leaves his bag on the sofa, “You two get ready for bed, we have a big day tomorrow.” 

Dean’s smile slides slightly off his face, not even an inch down, but Sam sees it anyway and anger bubbles inside of him. It’s frightening how quickly he molds himself around Dean’s emotions, it’s out of his control too, he feels like one of Pavlov's dogs, drooling dutifully when Dean gives him the flash of a grin, a juicy morsel of joy, and showing his teeth his brother grimaces. 

“Where are you going?” He hears himself asking, and it’s stupid, because he knows where his dad is leaving, he’s known the moves of this particular dance for years now, but canine rage froths at his mouth and he can’t help himself. He wants to bite.

He doesn’t need to look at Dean to know he disapproves. They don’t ask questions, they just nod and walk, but Sam’s been full of questions since he was five and he never lets them all cascade down from his tongue, he’s got more control than that. He only asks questions when he already knows the answers; _“Where are you going, dad?” “What’s under my bed, Dean?”_ It’s also why he never truly asks questions about his mother, he’s got no way to know, no way to draw conclusions, his mother is as hazy as his nightmares, but she’s pure snow, a veil of untainted good over his darkest of thoughts. He can’t touch that, he can’t make it dirty.

John’s glower gets darker, “Out.”

“Typical.” Sam’s anger gets braver.

There’s always an edge between them, something sharp and cold that never severs them completely because Dean is here, he’s the balm to their blade. It’s a shame they make him bleed so much to keep the peace. 

“Dean,” His brother is already up, his stand is straight and from it is gone all the mellow happiness of having a warm bed and a pillow with a cowboy hat pattern “Make sure you both eat something if I’m not back in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We leave for the sanatorium at 6 pm, keep the guns ready.”

“Yes, sir.” 

God, Sam hates them both so much when they’re like this. Sometimes he hopes Dean will choke on his pleasantries and that dad will spit dark, purulent blood with his orders. But the hatred never burns too long, it would be easier if he was just a rebellious child, angry without reason, bitter and odious with his family because of his hormonal imbalance. It’s not the case, Sam’s hostility is just a spark, and he wishes he could feed it more, he wishes he could explode with it, he wishes he could stop caring so much about them both that the idea of hurting them completely breaks him into tiny, chewable pieces. He hates them both, but he loves them so much more and he knows, with the terrible accuracy you develop when you’re a kid too smart for your age, a kid who's seen too much, that he’ll die for them one day. He’ll keep biting at his father, trying to tear down instructions with his pearly whites while exposing his soft belly to the sure knife of the hunting life. If he passes twenty-five, he’ll be lucky.

He doesn’t say this, could never say this, at least not to Dean who folds himself into pocketable squares for Sam’s complacency, but he thinks it so loudly sometimes he’s afraid it will echo out of his own mind.

John doesn’t slam the door when he leaves, but Sam hears it anyway. Dean sighs, crosses the space of the room to get his own things and empties the content of his duffle on the bed, _their_ bed. He’s going to spend his evening cleaning guns, sharpening knives and Sam will watch the mechanical movements, a visual lullaby of quick fingers on even quicker triggers. 

“Why do you always have to pick a fight?” 

It takes Sam a moment to figure out the question is for him, it’s evident because he’s the only one left in the room with Dean but he sometimes forgets he’s not invisible next to his brother. Not that Dean ignores him, not much at least, but Sam spends his life feeling like an observer, looking through the windows of someone else’s existence. 

He shrugs, Dean’s already dismantled his Colt, “I don’t know.” It’s not a good answer, he knows, it’s not an answer at all. “It’s just all,” He sighs too, it’s all so complicated when the words can never come out and you just drift through oceans of truths, trying to grasp at any sweeter lie, “You know.”

Dean looks up, he’s got the handle of his gun, opalescent and smooth, in one hand and a rag in the other. “No, Sam, I don’t _know_. You always make it more complicated and I’m not even sure you know what you want.”

But that’s the problem, because Sam _knows_ , Sam knows what he wants better than anyone else, better than anyone will ever know. He’ll die for his family, but he’ll die with a mouth full of lies and hands that have never touched what he truly desires. 

“Forget it, Dean.” He locks himself in the bathroom with his pyjamas, just a pair of clean boxers and one of Dean’s old Van Halen shirts, the _Tour of the World 1984_ one with its faded blue and green globe. It doesn’t smell like his brother anymore, Sam’s been using it for three years at least, but he’ll be close to Dean tonight, pressed against his back, with his nose near his hair and it’s enough to make Sam want, to make Sam hope. He brushes his teeth and makes his gum bleed, he doesn’t look in the mirror when he leaves.

* * *

The sanatorium is buried in the deep ends of a dry, burnished forest in the southeast part of Phillips. It’s well hidden, the copper red bricks fade in the orange hue of the woods and if restless, horny teenagers hadn’t decided that this place was the perfect post-date sex spot, the wraith would have probably infested the building without really bothering anyone around it. It could only frighten the few squirrels and birds that lived there, it wasn’t powerful enough to affect the rest of the town, but it had made three victims in the span of three weeks and now it’s their problem.

Sam isn’t afraid, wraiths are easy enough, but he’s in pain, his elbow stings every time he shifts the weight of his shotgun on his arm and his legs are heavy with fatigue. He isn’t in any shape to hunt, he’s tried to tell his father this when he woke up feeling like he’d swallowed lead, but John had been implacable. 

“You need to learn how to manage your discomfort, son,” He hadn’t looked too fresh either, with the mauve bags under his eyes and the smell of cigarettes clinging to his clothes. “Some hunts aren’t gonna wait for you to get your elbow fixed.” Sam hadn’t argued, he had figured that it wouldn’t have done any good, he’d just nodded but Dean next to him had seemed troubled. 

They roll in the ruins of the sanatorium just before the sun sets, Sam’s got a lamp torch in his back pocket, next to a pack of rock salt shells. Dean is walking in front of him, his own torch directed at the corridors of the hospital, they always form the line in this order. Dean in the front with a light and his Colt, Sam in the middle with a shotgun and John closing the march with a rifle. Sam used to feel safe like this, with his father and his brother towering over him protectively, but he’s taller now and he feels unsteady. He doesn’t fit right anymore. He still follows his brother in the sinuous knot of hospital halls that stand before them, he might not trust himself entirely but he trusts Dean.

All the windows are broken, glass is scattered all over the floor, it cracks underneath their heavy boots like friable bird bones, Sam doesn’t look at his feet. They’d learned while doing their research through too many news articles that a fire had ravaged the establishment years ago and some patients’ bodies had been left here. It didn’t make their job easier, if the bodies had burned it meant the wraith was stuck here, linked to something else, something harder to find than human remains, but they had agreed to look for the bones first, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that everything had truly burned. 

“This place is a shithole,” Dean fusses as he walks over a hole in the floorboards, “If I ever catch tuberculosis, leave me to die at an Outback Steakhouse.”

Sam snorts, “Nobody dies of tuberculosis now, Dean, it’s 1997, not the Dark Ages.”

“Alright, smartypants, but if I start coughing up blood on your head tonight while you sleep, you know what my last demands are.”

“What? To be buried with steak sauce?” Sam rolls his eyes, “Can you be more of a cliché?”

“I can certainly try, bitch.”

“Boys,” Their father’s voice always acts like a clean sweep of their banter, “Can you two focus like professionals for at least ten minutes?”

Twin versions of, “Yes, sir,” And that’s a strange thought, what their life would have been like if they’d been twins instead of older and younger brothers. There’s only so much you can share with a person before you start to devour them and Sam wonders with a flash of morbid fascination if he would have let himself been absorbed by his brother in utero. 

They pass a few more doors, the floorboard under them pops and whistles with each of their steps, Dean’s arm hasn’t wavered since they’ve entered the sanatorium and they follow the halo of light he creates for a while without talking. Then something howls behind them, on their right, they all aim towards the sound, lethally synchronised, but there’s nothing except overgrown shrubs and broken furniture. 

“Keep your eyes open,” John orders, and Sam can feel his breath on the back of his neck.

Everything creaks and groans, the floor, the walls, the hospital cries with dismay and age. Dean holds his gun under the lamp torch now, his target is aligned, Sam’s own hands fumble with his shotgun. Every angle of his body aches, he feels bruised from the inside out.

He’s trailing behind Dean with the shotgun aiming towards the ground, his feet drag on the ground, his head is ringing with pain but he’s focusing on the task at hand, any wrong movement with his gun could put his brother in danger and he couldn’t live with that type of mistake. He’s shaking by the time they get to a staircase, when his father asks if he’s okay he just mentions the surrounding cold but he knows he’s not fooling anyone. Dean turns, just for a second, to take a look at him and he can see his lack of conviction in the green of his eyes, mixed with something else, something akin to worry.

“Dad, maybe Sammy should wait for us in the car.” 

His father is shaking his head before Dean can even finish and Sam doesn’t have it in him to mention that he wouldn’t be able to make the walk back towards the Impala on his own right now. “It’s not safe to split up right now, we just have to keep moving.” He puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder, and it’s gentle and warm, so comforting that he has issues associating it with his father. “I’m sorry son, you’re gonna have to bite the bullet a little longer.”

Dean opens his mouth, as if he’s going to disagree with their father, which would shock Sam more than John’s reassurance and apology, he changes his mind at the last minute, turning back and going up the stairs, Sam follows and tries not to fall.

The first floor is just as cluttered and crummy as the first floor, if not more, the heavy scent of mold and humidity clings to Sam’s skin, like an opaque shroud of decay or, in a more familiar form, a particularly nasty motel shower curtain. They pass through dark, small corridors where the walls feel caging and ensnaring, Sam finds the place terribly fitting for an evil spirit. They reach an office, they can only recognise it by the few fainting letters on the cracked window on the transom. The bookshelves are empty, either because someone took the time to empty them or because all the books, registers and papers they contained burned, but it leaves the room feeling bare, Sam doesn’t know where he should look.

His father severs their line of three and pushes towards the desk, he’s got the locked drawers open in a second and he’s digging evidently through the remains of a few files while Sam leans on a wall. His eyes sting and there’s icy sweat dripping from his shoulders to the end of his spine, he feels dirty and sick, it’s not an unusual feeling but it’s never a pleasant one. Dean hasn’t moved from his side, Sam guesses that if he wasn’t so pale and ill, Dean would be helping their father in his research right now, but he  _ is  _ pale and ill and so Dean stands next to him, one of his hand still pointing the lamp torch towards the desk and the other wrapped around Sam’s bicep, holding him up. When John looks up, something clenched in his hand, Sam lifts himself off the dank wall. 

“Did you find anything?” 

His father stares back, his mouth forms a mean sneer which doesn’t surprise Sam because he’s used to that level of anger being directed towards him but he doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve that look right now. He frowns.

“They weren’t just  _ curing  _ tuberculosis,” John says, furious in a way Sam hasn’t seen in a while. Dean next to him seems to sense it too, that burning rage.

“Dad, what’s-”

The door behind them hurls open, Dean shoots before Sam can even get his shotgun up. He smells the gunpowder, the salt and an overwhelming odor of ozone. The wraith.

“Sam, get back.”

He stumbles on his own feet, falls on the desk when his father shoves him backwards, the edge of it delves into the flesh of his hips. 

“Shit, Dean-”

It all happens so fast and Sam’s head can’t wrap itself around it, he feels the air shift around him, he sees his father fall through the floorboard, his foot disappearing through the rotten wood, and then he sees his brother get launched through a window, one that gives way to a larger, empty room. He hears his brother grunt and his father shout but the throbbing in his arm is louder and it takes him long, too long, to run after Dean.

“Sam! Sam, come back here!”

He ignores his father, it’s a second nature, and he rushes to the other room. He’s running in blind, his torch is still in his back pocket and his shotgun is heavy in his hand. Dean’s on the ground, he looks smaller like this, swallowed by the darkness and his too big jean jacket. The wraith is floating over him, its hands are encircling his throat, and Sam can hear the raw noise of Dean’s labored breathing while the creature chokes him. It’s bashing Dean’s head through the ground, using his neck as the handle of a hammer. 

“Hey!” His hand is shaking, his fingers on the trigger are slow, his father’s still screaming himself hoarse in the other room, but his brother is in pain and it doesn’t matter, none of it matters because Dean’s whispering his name in pain. The wraith roars when Sam shoots. It disappears in a fog of blight but it won’t stay gone for long.

He races to Dean, falling on his knees to check his pulse, he’s unconscious but he’s breathing and that’s all Sam can ask for. He opens his shotgun, crack all of his shells open to form a line of salt around his brother’s comatose form. It’s reckless, stupid really, and he’ll never tell Dean he’s done this if they get out of here alive, but they didn’t take any salt bags with them and he refuses to leave Dean like this, without some sort of protection. He hears a loud crash and an even louder groan, his father must have fallen all the way through the floor and landed somewhere below. He’s alone up here, alone with a monster and his blacked out brother.

“Shit.” He jumps back to his feet, the adrenaline helps to overcome the pounding in his head. He bolts, he needs to know what his father had found out because he’s not going to have the time to find whatever body remains is left in this hospital and he can’t drag both his brother and father out of here. He wouldn’t be able to do it with two functioning arms and he surely can’t do it when his right one is spasming in pain. 

He tries to not think of Dean when he leaves the room and locks himself back in the office. He finally gets his lamp torch out, but the light doesn’t comfort him. He’s scared, it’s the first time in a while he’s felt so terrified by a hunt and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s hurt, because Dean’s just gotten beaten up but a ghost or because he doesn’t have the weight of his father’s eyes on the back of his neck, but he has to choke back a sob because fuck, he’s never felt as young as he does now. 

He wipes at his eyes, angry at his own weakness because Dean is alone and helpless next door, his father is hurt somewhere under his feet and he’s stupid, he’s a fucking idiotic kid who’s in over his head. He scoops papers out of the drawers, scans them quickly before combing through a myriad of others. At first, he’s not sure he gets it, it’s a bunch of medical terms, lines and lines on respiratory failure, and it seems normal, at least normal enough for a hospital treating infectious diseases. Then he finds it, the paper his father had clasped tightly in his fist, he smooths it on the desk before crumbling it back up with disgust.

Forced sterilization.

A hundred of women, parked like cattle in surgery rooms, cut up and sewn back together against their will because they weren’t  _ fit _ , they weren’t clean. Sam wants to vomit. The wraith could be born of something else, maybe a patient who actually died of tuberculosis, maybe someone who died in the fire, but Sam feels it in his guts, the horror, the blood, it stains him. He hears a shriek, it must be circling around Dean, wanting to finish the job but unable to, Sam leaves the office with the paper in hand, he thinks that if he holds it tightly enough, the ink might run off, erase the entire thing off existence. 

He can see the wraith clearly now, it spins in the air above his brother, its white hair forming a sick halo, its clothes torn to shreds, its skin a dark shade of green. He feels a spike of grief for it, for  _ her _ , and the tears well up in his eyes before he can stop it. He sniffles, she turns her head towards him, her eyes are white but she sees him, he knows. He doesn’t have a weapon, his shotgun and the carcass of its shells lie next to Dean. He can maybe drive it away, run in circles long enough for his father to smoke her out, but his chances are low. He’ll die before the sun rises, he knows that too.

He doesn’t mean to cry harder, the wraith is moving towards him, slithering above the floor like a snake. He wants to call out to Dean, to dad, he’s scared, and he’s fourteen and he feels feverish and wounded. He’s never wanted a mother more than now.

He doesn’t back away when the wraith grabs his face, he doesn’t move, doesn’t turn his gaze, he looks at it, at  _ her _ , and he lets his tears run down his cheeks freely. If he’s going to die, he’ll do it standing up.

The throaty heaving she’d been doing since she’d appeared again stops, Sam finds the silence even more upsetting. He looks at her face, the flesh of her cheeks and nose around her mouth, hangs in bloody chunks, he can see the white bones underneath. She strokes her fingers, colder than anything he’s ever felt, on his neck, then on his cheeks. She rubs a tear away, and he doesn’t know what she’s doing, he doesn’t understand, she’s not hurting him, she’s just holding him close. Her voice when she finally speaks is soft, it caresses his ears like a kiss.

“ _ You will never be enough, you will never truly go home. _ ” Her eyes are turning brown, he can see her pupils now, “ _ You don’t belong to yourself, I can take you with me, you will never hurt, you will never die. _ ” 

“S-Sam.” 

Her hands are warmer, his tears feel heavier, “ _ You can be free, you can be mine. _ ” His brother is moving, and Sam can’t feel his feet. “ _ They will take you away, they will taint you, you can stay with me, you can stay pure. _ ”

He can see her hair now, pitch black, she smells like vanilla and a home that he doesn’t know. And she’s wrong, he knows it, because he’s never been pure, he can’t be clean, he can’t stay.

“No,” He whispers and he tries to keep from screaming when she smiles and kisses his cheek gently. She explodes in a flash of bright, warm light and his skin heats at its contact, it doesn’t burn.

He loses consciousness.

* * *

Waking up hurts more than he remembers, he tries to get upright but a hand forces him back down.

“Don’t move just yet.” It’s Dean, and it’s embarrassing how he wants to cry at the sound of his brother’s voice, because Dean is okay, Dean is breathing next to him and he’s fine. Everything will be fine. “You’ve got a fever, kiddo, dad went to get you antibiotics.”

Sam opens his eyes, and he recognises the ceiling of the Impala, the black leather sticks to his skin when he tries to stand up again, Dean’s hand push him back harder.

“Jesus, Sammy, just stay put, alright?”

“I’m okay,” He says, but he doesn’t come out right. 

Dean snorts, “Yeah right, you send back a bloodthirsty wraith with the power of love and then you crashed so hard dad had to carry you on his back out of the door.”

He laughs a little at the image, “I saved your ass, jerk.”

Dean’s face loses its smile, “You did.” There’s guilt there that Sam doesn’t know how to deal with. “Don’t ever do that again, alright? I’m the one who saves your sorry backside in this relationship.”

Sam’s mouth tastes like blood. He looks at his brother, at his tired eyes and freckled skin, at his pink lips and he feels his heart clench.

_ They will take you away, they will taint you. _

_ You can stay with me. _

_ You can stay pure. _

“I won’t do it again, Dean.” He lies.

**Author's Note:**

> further trigger warning: the woman who is now a wraith in this story has been sterilized against her will, which is what caused her traumatic death and her transformation into a vengeful spirit.
> 
> comments are much appreciated!
> 
> -dnw


End file.
